Thread: Need a New Computer

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Hi Matt, I have been busy ordering electronic stuff while my garage is cold. I have a copy of the "Ubuntu Linux Bible" with a CD. It is a year old but I understand that it can be updated over the Internet. Are you running the Firefox browser? If so what anti-virus software is available for Firefox? Also I was interested in your remark about WINE being able to run Windows programs. It is very interesting to be able to get Ubuntu for free and then still run Windows applications. Regarding "The need for Speed!" in computing I am hoping to have an 8-core cluster with two cores from an AMD X2 5400+ running at 2.8 GHz (or more) and 6 other cores using three AMD X2 4200+ running at 2.2 GHz, all connected through a 1 Gig Ethernet switch. It should be slightly faster than the 27 GFLOPS achieved by the microWulf.
On the roadster I mocked up the heater on the inside of the firewall and was working on it when Christmas came along and then it really got cold, so that work remains untill the first glimmer of Spring along with the final connection of the steering.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

I don't know what version of UBUNTU you have but it could be 6.06 which is the latest LTS version ( long term service ) which is 2 years of supported bianaries, regular versions like 7.10 ( Gutsy Gibbion ) are supported for 16 months. I'd reccomend ither getting 7.10 or holding out for 8.04 which will release in April 2008. 7.10 came out in November 2007 ( all UBUNTU and KUBUNTU version numbers are just the release dates ) so it will be supported for a longer period than 6.06 as 6.06 will be replaced in April. 8.04 is the next LTS version.

they can't update versions over the internet, but what most people do is do 3 partitions rather than 2 partitions.. you need at least 4 gb for the root partition and 256mb for the swap.. but most ( and I did ) also create a small partition over 1 gig ( I did 10 gig ) and mount it as /home.. this will allow you to store all your configuration and system files on
that seperate partition and UBUNTU will pick it up and configure it to do just that, if you have a partition mounted as that.

Firefox comes with UBUNTU, and yes, it is what I use. There are like 2 viruses that are programmed to effect linux and they both have fixes cause they have been out so long. so there is no need for an antivirus, but there are antivirus programs that will scan files going out to windows machines. the most well known program is called Clamav

as for more info on Wine, just go here.. Wine has been out for a while. http://www.winehq.org/

Quick question for the REAL computer pros - without markings, how can I tell which USB cable is a 2.0 version. Is it the "pitchfork" on one end? I just got my little 80 Gig external hard drive, and it came with a USB that is only about 18 useless inches long, so I went to my extras box where I have several spares - and dug out a longer one that has the "pitchfork". Is this correct? If so, I need to dump any other 1.1 versions.

Thanks

PS: Don S., it's a balmy 12*F here right now!!

Originally Posted by DennyW

720 mbps.

So, the "pitchfork" on one end, is only telling you it's a USB cable.

.

Denny,
That's what I was afraid of - I transferred some pictures to my new external hard drive and I really took much longer, IMO, then it should have if it was a 2.0. And yes, my new mobo and case USB connections are totally 2.0. I do have a USB that I just found in another batch of "odd wires" that for sure is 2.0 and will exchange and try again with another similar size folder.
Thanks

EDIT - OF COURSE, of the 5 extra USB cables I have, I had to grab the only one that wasn't 2.0. I think it was a 1.0, just to make it the worst possible case. It's 'history' now and the drive seems to like the 2.0.

IC/Dave, I am trying to catch up to the rapidly changing hardware so the best I can do is suggest you look up USB PS2 cables on the Internet and figure out if you have one like the one in the picture of that cable.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Hi Don,
That was the first thing I tried - and why I posed the question as to the 'pitchfork' diagram. I ended up finally researching the part number on one for confirmation. Others that I dug out from another pile of wiring treasures later had the 2.0 designation - and scrapped the unidentifiable cable.

Dave, I have never had a problem with any USB cable working correctly unless it is damaged. They can be damaged especially ones that are removed frequently. Those little pins need to be pulled straight out, pulling to one side will bend or break them. (Especially true with flash drives!)
The 2.0 certificaion is in the USB sending and receiveing units and also in any hubs. Hubs have to be 2.0 certified to work properly and many are not backward compatible. But a good quality cabel will work with just about anything. I usaally get mine at Sam's club where they are cheaper than most office supply houses plus they have gold connectors.

Originally Posted by mopar34

Dave, I have never had a problem with any USB cable working correctly unless it is damaged. They can be damaged especially ones that are removed frequently. Those little pins need to be pulled straight out, pulling to one side will bend or break them. (Especially true with flash drives!)
The 2.0 certificaion is in the USB sending and receiveing units and also in any hubs. Hubs have to be 2.0 certified to work properly and many are not backward compatible. But a good quality cabel will work with just about anything. I usaally get mine at Sam's club where they are cheaper than most office supply houses plus they have gold connectors.

Bob,
All of the USB cables are backwards compatible so while the 1.0 or 1.1 cable that I had installed and have since scrapped, it had an extremely slow transfer rate. I ran about 300 photos to my external drive and it took over a minute. Using the 2.0, and about the same number of pictures in another folder took less then half that time. So, there is a difference there. Why do I care - well computer patience is not my best point As far as hubs, my new PC has at least 6 USB connections and I have a secondary hub with 6 more. Lots of toys can be run on this PC. Where did I get 'em? Not a clue - but they work fine.

The @#$% memory card reader just died!!!! I have just ordered a new one from Newegg - they are too cheap to try to go back to the manufacturer at $10-12 each. Luckily I have a 3-4 year old USB cable powered version as a back up.

I'm using MS Internet Explorer 6 (I think) and have for a long time on this PC and the last gotten 6025 error messages which kicks me out - tho doesn't disconnect my Earthlink. Any suggestions for a better web browser??

Originally Posted by IC2

Any suggestions for a better web browser??

I like Firefox and with few exceptions every thing runs better.

Originally Posted by DennyW

Oh, heres a picture of my boys board. You can almost see the pull starter for that one horse.

I'd venture to say that the video board in that thing probably cost more than my whole system.

DennyW,
If you like small, compact and fast, one day when you have free time you should check out Opera (www.opera.com). The Opera browser has been around for years, used to be competitive with IE 3.0 and Netscape 3.0. wheich was about 10 years before the birth of Firefox. Originally it was a text based browser that graduated to a GUI. It is also a free download. I prefer both Firefox and Opera to IE, but IE is the only supported by the IT unit at work. At home I use whichever one strikes my fancy at the time.

There are some websites that just work better with Firefox. I know several car sites that recommend Firefox over IE because Firefox gives the user better control.

For whatever reason, occasionally a forum picture wont show - and really have no clue why - except IE. Denny, your kids computer was/is one of them

I'll have to look at the other browsers suggested. I did try IE 7 a while back and after some pain reloaded IE 6. Thanks for the tips and I'll try 'em all

Originally Posted by DennyW

Well, that could be a setting on your system. I have had no problems viewing pictures with IE. That picture of him is a standard jpg picture. But, as you know, we do get unannounced tweaks on here. So, it could be anything.

So now it's on screen -
It only happens here, on this forum, nowhere else. ( Haven't we had something close to this conversation before )

Are you sure that's only a computer and not a shuttle controller

Gee time flies and for some reason I have not been getting notices from this thread. As far a my ChemWulf goes I have been learning and making some progress. I did get all the needed components:

Tower case
AMD X2 5400+ duocore @ 2.8 GHz

Three AMDX2 4200+ duocore @ 2.2 GHz

The rest are pretty much as in the microWulf components.

Microwulf: A Personal, Portable Beowulf Cluster

Microwulf: Hardware Manifest

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This page provides a detailed list of the hardware components we used to build Microwulf. Prices given are from Jan 1, 2007, and were at that time lower than those available from newegg.com.

Component Product Unit Price Quantity Total
Motherboard MSI K9N6PGM-F MicroATX $80.00 4 $320.00
CPU AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ AM2 CPU $165.00 4 $660.00
Main Memory Kingston DDR2-667 1GByte RAM $124.00 8 $992.00
Power Supply Echo Star 325W MicroATX Power Supply $19.00 4 $76.00
Network Adaptor Intel PRO/1000 PT PCI-Express NIC (node-to-switch) $41.00 4 $164.00
Network Adaptor Intel PRO/100 S PCI NIC (master-to-world) $15.00 1 $15.00
Switch Trendware TEG-S80TXE 8-port Gigabit Ethernet Switch $75.00 1 $75.00
Hard drive Seagate 7200 250GB SATA hard drive $92.00 1 $92.00
DVD/CD drive Liteon SHD-16S1S 16X $19.00 1 $19.00
Cooling Zalman ZM-F3 120mm Case Fans $8.00 4 $32.00
Fan protective grills Generic NET12 Fan Grill (120mm) $1.50
+ shipping 4 $10.00
Support Hardware 36" x 0.25" threaded rods $1.68 3 $5.00
Fastener Hardware Lots of 0.25" nuts and washers $10.00
Case/shell 12" x 11" polycarbonate pieces
(scraps from our Physical Plant) $0.00 4 $0.00
Total $2,470.00

Non-Essentials
Component Product Unit Price Quantity Total
KVM Switch Linkskey LKV-S04ASK $50.00 1 $50.00
Total $50.00

The prices are lower now and I guess I only have about $1400 in it so far. I really lucked out on three ATX cases from the Geek site with 480 watt power supplies for $9.99 each! I went back and tried to buy more thinking I could build some for sale on Ebay but there were no more so I got a good deal there. I did upgrade the SATA drive to 300 Gb for only $89. Hooking up the four boxes was a learning experience but I finally got three of them to boot up to the stage of asking for the primary boot device but the fourth just would not come up. I finally ordered a new motherboard and a new AMD X2 4200+ since I want to get it runnung soon. In particular I will have a few questions about Ubuntu and I see several of you are running Firefox successfully. I now think that maybe my problem might have been a bad memory card or maybe I ruined one stick with static. At the moment I have 2 Gb of memory in each satellite box and 4 Gb in the big box with the 5400+ duocore. In comunication with Prof. Adams who built the microWulf each motherboard has an extra 1GigE PCI card for two and he found out that the duocores can be addressed separately even though they are on the same chip. I don't know how this works but the duocores can handle two Ethernet connections so that makes the system of four duocores really act as 8 cores. My goal is to reach 30 GigaFLOPS with the faster CPUs but the 1GigEthernet may be the limiting factor, we will have to find out. At the moment I am trying to figure out how to connect a 100 foot cable from my home wireless router to the new system by wire. It seems for all I can find out that a wire connection is esier to set up than a wireless connection to the Ubuntu system. I should have known not to start two projects but every once in a while we have a warm afternoon and I go out to the garage and putter around on the roadster but it is still too cold for full time work on it. I did find out that my stainless top irons are the correct 2" chopped irons for my chopped windshield. Although there is still a big job to wire the roadster, finish the steering column and get the radiatior and hood on but there are so many things to do I can just go out and work on any of them and that is progress. Hopefully this response will get me back on the list for this thread since I still have a LOT to learn about the computer hardware.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder